Republicans Shut Down the Federal Government Again & Suffer Humiliating Defeat

palmab03 said:

Hence Trump just wants the issue. So take it away from him by agreeing to it publicly

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Even Ammon Bundy, the ring leader of the illegal occupation of that wildlife refuge in Oregon and son of the notorious tax evader Cliven, has come out against the wall as a wasteful, racism driven policy.

It's really amazing that we're well into the 21st Century, and we have a POTUS who is essentially in thrall to the whims of hard-right radio and television talk show hosts. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Tucker Carlson have more influence and control over the POTUS than do actual experts in their fields. Lovely.

My dad made some snide comment about "nonessential personnel" over Christmas dinner (i.e. if all these people are nonessential, why do we have them at all?). I refrained from reminding him that my grandfather/his father in law was a "nonessential" Park Service employee for 30 years, that my dad himself was a "nonessential" government employee at the state level for 30 years, and that all these people have mortgages and kids who depend on their paychecks. Fox News is continually making my parents dumber and harder to be around.

Deacon923 said:

My dad made some snide comment about "nonessential personnel" over Christmas dinner (i.e. if all these people are nonessential, why do we have them at all?). I refrained from reminding him that my grandfather/his father in law was a "nonessential" Park Service employee for 30 years, that my dad himself was a "nonessential" government employee at the state level for 30 years, and that all these people have mortgages and kids who depend on their paychecks. Fox News is continually making my parents dumber and harder to be around.

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Why didn’t you remind him? It seems like it would have been a low risk-high reward intervention. The only way to combat the likes of Fox News is to have conversations with our loved ones that are less than comfortable.

Deacon923 said:

My dad made some snide comment about "nonessential personnel" over Christmas dinner (i.e. if all these people are nonessential, why do we have them at all?). I refrained from reminding him that my grandfather/his father in law was a "nonessential" Park Service employee for 30 years, that my dad himself was a "nonessential" government employee at the state level for 30 years, and that all these people have mortgages and kids who depend on their paychecks. Fox News is continually making my parents dumber and harder to be around.

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You can add One America to the list. That's largely what my right wing family is watching now. We don't get it here on our cable, but my much saner sister had told me a while back she had been watching that and said she liked that it was factual reporting and not people arguing. Having not seen it, it sounded like an upgrade to me - given that everyone else in my family has been watching Fox over the last few to several years. But then I heard it on for about an hour or so while my dad and a couple others were watching it. I was in the computer room checking sports stuff and playing games and was listening in from time to time. There were 2 brief bios of Pub senators during a kind of break and calling them patriots, which I don't think even Fox does. They had a Middle East story on a small Christian minority in Iraq or Syria (yes, Christians are being persecuted in the ME - alert the rest of the media). There was a story on the shutdown and wall blaming Dems, and there was 1 on Mattis being canned - though with no real reason given and nothing about the Kurds or Erdogan.

So I got home today and looked up One America to see about its origins and obviously discovered it's a right wing site that is vying with Fox as an alternative and has been similarly supportive of Trump. Just further confirmation that that 40% number ain't going nowhere. I really don't see how our country can move forward in any rational manner when the electorate can't remotely agree on what is real and what isn't. I enjoyed my interaction with my nephew and nieces who are all in college now and have some hope for their generation, well, other than their lack of attention span and always looking at their phones. But I think the next 10-15 years are going to be extremely rough and don't have a ton of hope for our republic generally.

Dealing with a different type of Fox News type issue with my aging in-laws. They’re too proud to use government programs geared towards helping them. They don’t really “need” it and don’t want to “take advantage of the system.” They also don’t want the housekeeper we found for them because more recent Cuban immigrants “are just trying to game the system.”

If it makes people proud not to ask for help, let em be proud. But what programs are ya talking about, Medicare?

Strickland33 said:

Why didn’t you remind him? It seems like it would have been a low risk-high reward intervention. The only way to combat the likes of Fox News is to have conversations with our loved ones that are less than comfortable.

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Agree with this. I ignored my family’s conservative cultism for nearly a decade and it literally did nothing but made things worse.

It’s not always easy but I have been hammering them on their news diet and on this abortion of a presidency for the better part of 2 years. It hasn’t moved the needle completely but my dad is at least trying to evaluate the objectivity of news sources now.

Deacon923 said:

My dad made some snide comment about "nonessential personnel" over Christmas dinner (i.e. if all these people are nonessential, why do we have them at all?). I refrained from reminding him that my grandfather/his father in law was a "nonessential" Park Service employee for 30 years, that my dad himself was a "nonessential" government employee at the state level for 30 years, and that all these people have mortgages and kids who depend on their paychecks.

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I'm not advocating for anyone to lose his/her job and I'm sure a number of these positions add value, but are 380,000 non-essential federal employees really necessary?

At an average cost of $120,000 per federal employee, that translates to an annual bill of $46B to the taxpayers. Eliminating 20% of these positions will save upwards of $9B per year which can be re-invested into other programs or lower tax rates.

the average salary of a federal employee is not $120k.

the average is closer to $80k

but yeah, made up facts are more fun

Take it up with the Huff Post which is where this number was reported.

Also, the $120k is an all-in number and includes more than just salary.

But I would expect someone in charge of a family business to understand simple concepts like that without having it explained.

Newenglanddeac said:

Agree with this. I ignored my family’s conservative cultism for nearly a decade and it literally did nothing but made things worse.

It’s not always easy but I have been hammering them on their news diet and on this abortion of a presidency for the better part of 2 years. It hasn’t moved the needle completely but my dad is at least trying to evaluate the objectivity of news sources now.

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To be fair, you were part of the cult during that time.

One thing I’ve noticed from Republicans who are rejecting the current direction of the party is that they seem to have no plan to reclaim the party. They’re lost or “political orphans” as Chris Ladd puts it.

It’s like they’ve been riding in the back of an 18 wheeler. Trump took the wheel and they didn’t like how he was driving so they demanded to get out. But then realized they have no idea where they are and had no idea where they were even headed this whole time.

Colonel Angus said:

I'm not advocating for anyone to lose his/her job and I'm sure a number of these positions add value, but are 380,000 non-essential federal employees really necessary?

At an average cost of $120,000 per federal employee, that translates to an annual bill of $46B to the taxpayers. Eliminating 20% of these positions will save upwards of $9B per year which can be re-invested into other programs or lower tax rates.

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"nonessential" includes almost all of NASA, the IRS, and most of the Park Service. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/federal-workers-face-furloughs-retro-pay-amid-looming/story?id=59863103

Also the number of people employed by the federal government has shrunk drastically over the past 30 years, to the point where many agencies are already struggling to do their jobs because they don't have enough manpower. But sure, if the goal is to have a government that does nothing but insure old people and field the largest military on the planet, why not pick a number out of the air and slash the workforce by that?

Colonel Angus said:

I'm not advocating for anyone to lose his/her job and I'm sure a number of these positions add value, but are 380,000 non-essential federal employees really necessary?

At an average cost of $120,000 per federal employee, that translates to an annual bill of $46B to the taxpayers. Eliminating 20% of these positions will save upwards of $9B per year which can be re-invested into other programs or lower tax rates.

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$9B is almost enough for 2 walls! Awesome!

Deacon923 said:

"nonessential" includes almost all of NASA, the IRS, and most of the Park Service. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/federal-workers-face-furloughs-retro-pay-amid-looming/story?id=59863103

Also the number of people employed by the federal government has shrunk drastically over the past 30 years, to the point where many agencies are already struggling to do their jobs because they don't have enough manpower. But sure, if the goal is to have a government that does nothing but insure old people and field the largest military on the planet, why not pick a number out of the air and slash the workforce by that?

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Exactly. The proposition here is to cut ~76,000 jobs from an already depleted work force that has under gone nearly 15 years hiring freezes or limitations along with basically 0% budget growth for 8 years, on top of 0% growth for 8 out of the 10 years prior to that. How are we going to monitor environmental toxins, manage migratory wildlife, regulate comercial fishing, monitor tsunamis and volcanoes, maintain interstate highways, monitor Wall Street corruption, maintain damns and waterways, patrol the goddamn border, etc., etc., etc.?

Republicans Shut Down the Federal Government Again

Republicans generally don’t think those are important except the last one.

Colonel Angus said:

Take it up with the Huff Post which is where this number was reported.

Also, the $120k is an all-in number and includes more than just salary.

But I would expect someone in charge of a family business to understand simple concepts like that without having it explained.

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facepalm

Yes, 380,000 "non-essential" positions are necessary. More than that, for a country with a population of 325 million that number is way too low.

Colonel Angus said:

I'm not advocating for anyone to lose his/her job and I'm sure a number of these positions add value, but are 380,000 non-essential federal employees really necessary?

At an average cost of $120,000 per federal employee, that translates to an annual bill of $46B to the taxpayers. Eliminating 20% of these positions will save upwards of $9B per year which can be re-invested into other programs or lower tax rates.

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